Pulse 3d Layer separation with MH Build PLA

Hello fellow hackers! I recently purchased the Pulse 3D XE and the test cube was amazing! The next print was a scan of a dog, and again amazing! Then I started a print that is the center column for a cryptex and i could just pull apart the layers. I made sure that I was not trying to lay down too thick a layer (.2) and that seemed fine. I then upped my extruder temp from 200 to 205. No change. I am running a print with 210 extruder temp hopefully that will fix it, but I thought I was share my journey I am excited to start playing with nylonX but I want to get comfy with the printer first. You can ignore the stringing, I am sure that is because of the low retraction default for the bondtech.

Upped the temp, and the case looks better. I am still seeing signs of under extrusion (I think) I am going to up the retraction to nix the stringing, keeping the temp at 210 before I mess with extrusion % changes. I added more photos to the above gallery showing the newest print.

I printed the bottom and kept the same temp, increased retraction. no strings. but still poor layer adhesion. I will up the extrusion multiplier to 1.05 and try again. The top is acceptable, but so far the bottom lets me know I have not fixed the problem.

Catastrophe! I am not sure what happened but I upped the multiplier, everything looked okay for the first layer. I turn my attention back to work, check on it again 15-20 mins later and it is pushing the piece around the bed. It lost adhesion, no biggy. I turn it off, go to clear the mess around the nozzle and it is totally covered in plastic. The silicone shield on the e3d had been pushed off the hot end and was swarmed in plastic spaghetti and clinging on for it's life!

I had tons of layer separation and layer bonding issues when I first got MH Build Series PLA. The only color that seemed to print fine was the black (I bought White, Red, and Black). I was salty to say the least as I had heard great things about the filament and it is pretty cheap for a decent brand of filament. I did some searching to no avail so I said what the heck, why not throw it into my "PrintDry" (I say it in quotes because I turned a food dehydrator into a PrintDry for a total of 25 bucks). I put the MH Build white and red in it with another roll of PLA that needed dried and set it to 45C and let it go. I shut it off about 10 hours later, let it cool, and then put two of the spools into their ziploc desiccant bags and tried to print with the white. To my surprise it printed perfectly fine. The exact same slicing file that wouldn't bond layers together printed near flawlessly.

I don't know if the batches I got had a higher water content than they are supposed to or what, but ever since that day I ALWAYS throw my MH Build Series PLA into the "PrintDry" before I print with them for the first time or transfer them into their ziploc dessicant bags from their factory sealed bag.

If you don't have a "PrintDry", I would HIGHLY suggest you make one before you get into the Nylon game. Nylon absolutely LOVES its water and soaks it up far quicker than I ever thought it would. So much that I even built an airtight filament box to print Nylon from so that it can still be printed in a desiccant box. I had found that even average prints (~8 or so hours) would show a slight but noticeable difference from the base where the nylon was very dry to the top where it had soaked up water from the air, even a little bit of water seems to mess with most nylons. Good luck!

@hoydavidj Oh man! I didn't even think about the PLA doing that! I am so paranoid about flexible and nylon filaments for that too haha. I will try that, it has been abnormally hot/humid here in so cal lately.

I also have a hacked food dehydrator and now with the XE package I have the official print dry. I should see which one works better hehe.

So I fired up the Pulse and let it heat up to extract the filament for drying, and no dice. Never reported getting hot, and it did not feel warmer than the ambient temp. So I powered down and took a look and blamo. Loose/disconnected wire buried in the plastic.

I am guessing that maybe when it was being forced over it while molten, some hardened, then the flow pushed on it and it pulled it out. Or maybe when it cooled it contracted enough to pull it free. Either way I think I have some bits to replace/rewire.

and another shot of it

It looks like I should be able to replace the thermistor and be done with it. However I still have the gunk left on the heater cartridge AND buried up in the fins of the heatsink so I am still leaning towards a rebuild.

I keep forgetting that MatterHackers has amazing support (I come from Anet A8 world) so I will reach out to them first. I'll keep this post updated.

Alright all parts got here. Rebuilding it was SUPER easy. I took pictures at every step, so then I could just watch them in reverse to put it back together. Just had to re-calibrate things and bam up and running!

Big shout out to the Matter Hackers support team! Thank you so much!

Tip: keep your zip ties that you have to cut off, then as you replace them throw the old ones out, this makes sure you put back on the same number that you removed.